Finance is changing rapidly. A growing number of investors, companies and policy-makers worldwide are slowly, but steadily, recognising the deep mutual interconnections between finance and sustainability. The COP21 agreement of last December and the growing adoption of responsible investment strategies are just examples of this more general trend. We may have finally embarked on the journey toward ... »

Investments are the key driving forces for the progress of our society. A new trend is being developed with impact investments, ensuring the societal value creation of the financial capital invested. Within this context, this paper introduces and critically characterizes a new product called Social Impact Bond (SIB). Reviewing the mechanism in the first part, the research raises the question about ... »

oikos Roundtable.
Co-organized with the Henley Business School and hosted by UBS.
Thursday, 15 September 2016, 9.30am – 1.30pm.
By invitation

Goal

The momentum for sustainable investing is fueled by a myriad of actors from both academia and practice. While some bridges between them are well established, many synergies among researchers and investors remain unseized. Pressure ... »

As a leader in sustainable finance in India, Yes Bank reached the milestone of mainstreaming sustainability within its core business principles with a vision of evolving as the ‘Best Quality Bank of the World in India by 2020’. The sustainable corporate performance of the bank focussed on the triple bottom-line ethos, wherein the three interlinked measurement elements — ... »

Established in 2001 by Chandra Shekhar Ghosh to address the dual objective of poverty alleviation and empowerment of women, Bandhan was the largest microfinance institution (MFI) in India and the largest non-deposit taking MFI in the world. By 2013, it had grown to 2,016 branches across 22 states and union territories within India. With over 5 million borrowers and total outs ... »

Socially responsible investing (SRI) is an investment process that screens investment opportunities based on ethical, social, corporate governance, or environmental. SRI has been growing rapidly; total U.S.-domiciled SRI-managed assets increased from $3.74 trillion in 2012 to $6.57 trillion in 2014. The growth of SRI puts it in a position to encourage sustainability as such f ... »

The case study is based on a dilemma faced by IFC, one of the financing arms of the World Bank Group, on whether it should release its next round of funding to Corporación Dinant (Dinant), a Hondurus-based vertically-integrated palm oil and food company, to enable it to develop young palm oil plantations. IFC, which proposed to invest US$30million of the total estimated project cost o ... »

Founded in 1940, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF) is a private charitable foundation endowed with John D. Rockefeller’s heritage made in the fossil fuel sector from so called “Big Oil” companies. While it is RBF’s mission to advance social change and to contribute to a more just, sustainable, and peaceful world, in 2014 the fund was still invested in fossil fuels - ... »

This case presents the history and development of a Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) project in the Kibera slums of Nairobi, Kenya, that was initiated by Rotarians and funded initially, in large part, by the Rotary International Foundation. It discusses the numerous operational and strategic challenges faced by those working on this Kibera Project and the Rotary Project ... »

Friends of the Children, a nonprofit organization in Portland, Oregon, was founded in 1993 by retired entrepreneur Duncan Campbell to serve youth at the highest risk of teen parenting, incarceration, or dropping out of school. Each youth client was matched with a paid mentor from first grade through the end of high school. The costs of this intervention were high, but the out ... »

Socially Responsible Investments (SRI) is a category of investments which has developed considerably over the past years and it accounts for an increasing share of total investments. This trend has been accompanied (or maybe encouraged) by an increase in the number and diversification of sustainability (or SRI) indices. Up to date, the majority of the research concerning sustainability indices foc ... »

This paper analyzes and quantifies cost structures of agent-assisted banking beyond branches channels (ABCs) and compares them to the costs of branch channels. This addresses a gap in the existing literature. The qualitative review finds that ABCs maximize the proportion of variable costs that depend on realized transactions, which match revenue flows. ABCs reduce investment and operating costs, s ... »

oikos St. Gallen will host SUSI Partners for oikos&Pizza. SUSI Partners is a Swiss investment advisor specialized in financing the development of sustainable infrastructure, including renewable energy generation, energy efficiency, and the optimization of energy storage and grid infrastructure. Further information is available here. ... »

The oikos FutureLab is the biggest event in the annual oikos calendar which gathers representatives from the entire oikos community. It provides a 2-day platform for 140 participants to inspire, discover and develop joint perspectives on the future of sustainability in management and economics. More information is available here.

In order to achieve a sustainable growth and to respond to social pressures, firms develop their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) policy. Corporate Governance, especially the board of directors, plays here a strategic role by integrating the environmental, social and societal objectives in the decision-making process. Based on the French case, this dissertation analyzes how corporate governan ... »

A Facebook post decided my future to work on a newly implemented format of oikos – the learning circles. I’ve joined the finance learning circle as a co-manager with my collegue Sanober and frankly speaking, it was one of the best decisions, I’ve ever made. Very interesting fellow-workers, participants and speakers made my experience priceless.

Corporate sustainability ratings or sustainability ratings (SRs) are applied to integrate sustainability in investment decisions. In order to evaluate the contribution to tackling sustainability challenges and in order to apply them, agencies need to disclose information about the construction of the SR. This thesis follows four steps to present transparency criteria for the construction of SRs. F ... »

oikos and the University of Zurich are inviting applications from qualified candidates for an oikos PhD Fellowship at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, starting in February 2016. The fellowship will provide a grant for a PhD focused on “Finance and Sustainability” at the University of Zurich’s Department of Banking and Finance.

The oikos PRI Young Scholars Finance Academy in Reading, UK, May 31 to June 4, 2015

In the past decade, corporate fraud, bank scandals and financial crises have taken their toll on society’s trust in the global financial system. The recent events have established the need for substantial changes in the way we think and act in order to create a more sustainable and long-term oriented ... »

The case study is about the dilemma faced by Dr. Jim Yong Kim (Kim), President of the World Bank Group, related to International Finance Corporation’s (IFC) funding of the Tata Mundra Project in India. The Mundra plant was one of the Ultra Mega Power Projects (UMPPs) conceived with the objective of providing cheap electricity to power-starved states of India. Coastal Gujara ... »

oikos Tbilisi launched new project ‘’oikos Talks’’. The team was inspired by oikos Vienna chapter, which started oikos Talks in December last year. They supported oikos Tbilisi to start the project in Georgia. oikos Talks is the series of meetings, the aim of which is to give students and interested listeners a personal and special insight in sustainable economics related t ... »

Inspired by oikos Vienna, which started oikos Talks in December 2014, oikos Tbilisi decided to organize the project at Tbilisi State University. The aim of this series is to give students and interested listeners a personal and special insight in sustainable economics related topics. Also it is our intention to show how broad and diverse the field of sustainable economics and management really is. ... »

Five oikos Warsaw members are taking part in the oikos Spring Meeting 2015 in London devoted to the topic of Sustainable Finance. Check out our FB page to get an instant update on what is happening there! ... »

Join us at the LSE on the 12th of March at 5:30pm in CLM 5.02 to hear Howard Covington and Raj Thamotheram speak on their concept of 'Forceful Stewardship' - The use of investor's voting rights to require publicly listed companies to move towards business plans consistent with limiting global warming to 2 degrees and enhancing shareholder value.

The theme for 2015 edition of our magazine is “Financing Green Economy". The discussion here revolves around two overarching economic issues; first, how to build a clean energy economy, creating millions of good jobs in the process; and second, how to create a financial system focused on channeling money toward productive investment as opposed to destabilizing speculation. ... »

The 2015 oikos Spring Meeting will be hosted in London between March 26th and 29th 2015. It will bring together 120 students from across the globe to enquire, think and discuss the relationship between finance and sustainability alongside LSE students and expert speakers.

The 2015 oikos Spring Meeting will be hosted in London between March 26th and 29th 2015. It will bring together 120 students from across the globe to enquire, think and discuss the relationship between finance and sustainability alongside LSE students and expert speakers.

Money and trade is connecting people all over the world. In everyday life, we do not question our modes of transaction through money and trade – we take them to be grown all naturally and as if there were no alternatives.
But is that really the case? This is the question we are asking at the next oikos winter school with the theme, “X-Change – Sustainability through money and trade“.We ... »

Finance is at the core of sustainability – or lack thereof. Capital flows are a key factor in the development of our societies. Ensuring that they reflect long-term economic, social and environmental criteria is critical. As a result, what is being taught in finance classes and the research that is developed in finance institutes is a big deal. Making sus ... »

The oikos London Spring Meeting will bring 120 students from across the globe to listen, think and talk about the role of finance in a sustainable world. Following a deconstruction of the financial system and an assessment of its actors, institutions, drivers and influence, participants will assess how the financial system can be adapted to ensure its own sustainability and to support progress i ... »

Finshastra is a financial journal, with theme on the same lines of oikos agenda of promoting sustainable development by strengthening action competence among students of business and economics. This year’s theme is “ Financing the green economy”. We publish interviews of well-known people from the financial world. We invite articles, opinions from eminent personalities in the field of financ ... »

Ethical Finance and Responsible Investment as tools of Sustainable Development is a conference that will take place on May 8th at Warsaw School of Economics (Aula I, C building). The agenda is full of speeches concerning ethical finance, responsible investing in the context of CSR and Fair Trade. The conference will an occasion to present the first Polish guidebook on ethical finance and responsi ... »

Without any need for introduction, people knew who these men were. They were well-dressed, well-connected and accomplished, and they had far more than a few billion dollars behind them, an amount representing the resources of some of the world’s largest financial institutions.

When these big banks decided to become involved in impact investing, they brought recognition, credibility ... »